Evening Tide｜Gray, black and bright colors in Stop and Go
2024-08-16
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Chao News Client Xiang Yu
"Go and Stop" starring Hu Ge and Gao Yuanyuan tells the story of "failed young migrant worker in Beijing" Wu Di (Hu Ge) who returns to his hometown and meets his old classmate Feng Liuliu (Gao Yuanyuan) whom he hasn't seen for many years. The latter regards him as the protagonist of her new documentary and "encourages" him to make the script into a movie. In the end, the documentary was a success, but Wu Di's movie was not completed with the death of his mother (Yue Hong). At the 14th Beijing International Film Festival in 2024, the film won three awards including Best Film, Best Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress.
From a narrative point of view, this is a self-reflective film that is deeply loved by the film fans. The film not only shows the difficulties of screenwriters through Wu Di's failed movie dream, but also reflects on some essential issues of these two types through Wu Di's filming and Feng Liuliu's documentary filming. For example, the relationship between reality and performance is explored through the characters' insincere words when facing the camera, and the relationship between documentary and fiction is explored through Feng Liuliu's interference in life to make the documentary better.
Compared with similar films, the greatest success of Stop and Go is that it combines the plot of the film and the life of the characters in a seamless way. The filming of the film "Like an Old Friend Comes" is always disturbed and interrupted by characters outside the plot. For example, in one scene, the voice-over of Wu's father (played by Zhou Yemang) going to the toilet was clearly transmitted to the set, which made people laugh and made us feel his disgust and rejection. On the contrary, filming also constitutes interference, destruction and revelation of the characters' lives. It exposes the secret that Wu's father and mother each have a "lover" and attracts a lot of rumors. It also shows their husband-wife relationship through Wu's father's tension about the ambiguous relationship between his wife's character played by him in "Like an Old Friend Comes" and other men. Although the filming reveals the imperfection of their love, the great grief of Wu's father after his mother died accidentally during the filming makes us realize that even if there are flaws, their love does not fade because of the hardship of life and the "spiritual derailment" in the hardship. In a reshoot scene, Wu's father put on Wu's mother's clothes to play Wu's mother and finished shooting the reshoot. The camera was turned off, but Wu's father was still immersed in the plot. The film uses bright and warm light and large aperture close-up shots that are rarely seen in this film to show Wu's father/mother making popsicles, allowing us to see the poetry and beauty in the poor and difficult lives of ordinary people.
If Wu Di played by Hu Ge and Feng Liuliu played by Gao Yuanyuan are the "face" of the film, then the mother played by Yue Hong and the father played by Zhou Yemang constitute the "inside" of the film. In the former, we see the pressure and challenges of modern people in the workplace; in the latter, we see the triviality, helplessness and true love of ordinary life.
The overall tone of the film is gray and gloomy. Even the many comedic scenes at the beginning do not use the bright lights and vivid colors commonly used in comedy films. However, the love between parents, father and son, mother and son, and brother and sister gives this film, which tells the story of a gray life of frustration and failure, a bright color that is free from despair and dares to face the bleak life, reflecting the strong vitality of the traditional Chinese family ethics melodrama. The non-perfect and non-idealized treatment of ethical family affection gives the film a distinct sense of modernity, allowing it to avoid the trap of over-moralization of ethical melodramas.
In addition to gray and bright colors, this film also has many dark plots, either obvious or hidden: the documentary shot by Feng Liuliu was taken by the leader as his own, which is a plot with obvious black connotations. In comparison, the more subtle and obscure black is the act of Feng Liuliu shooting the documentary itself. She approached Wu Di as an old classmate and told him that she was "divorced" so that he would agree to let her shoot her life. Feng Liuliu "encouraged" Wu Di to shoot a movie for the documentary effect, but after her achievements were taken away, she angrily resigned and prepared to take her daughter to Beijing for development. But at the end of the film, Wu Di, who was driving a taxi, met Feng Liuliu sitting in a luxury car and laughing with her husband and son. Did she have a new life, or was the divorce she said before a lie to gain sympathy and achieve her own goals? The film did not give a clear answer. Although Gao Yuanyuan, who played Feng Liuliu, looked as pure and lovely as ever, Wu Di's indifference and Feng Liuliu's embarrassment hinted at some chilling black possibilities.
The gray tone has both the chilling black and the bright colors that give people the courage and hope to face the bleak life. This colorful aesthetic gives the film a realistic complexity and depth. It can be said to be a rare artistic masterpiece.
Author profile: Xiang Yu, professor at Zhejiang Media College.
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